Toward a revival of the sung Mass

Fr. Mark Kirby, writer of the Vultus Christi blog, is in Italy for a few weeks, where is to present a talk at the Adoratio conference in Rome. He has some observations on the state of the liturgy in Italy: with priest celebrants omitting the daily Proper texts of the Mass and neglecting to sing, the celebration of the Mass is often impoverished there as much as it is here in the US.
Reflecting on the great letter on sacred music Tra le sollecitudini by Pope St. Pius X, Fr. Kirby offers some suggestions for a new papal letter to revive the practice of the sung Mass, where people and priest sing the real texts of the Mass, and not just songs.

14 thoughts on “Toward a revival of the sung Mass”

Nick

I don’t see how singing Mass is part of Tradition.
It’s not in the Church Fathers, as far as I can see.

The treasury of Gregorian chant may be the world’s oldest heritage of written music. The oldest manuscripts, which reside in the city of Laon in northern France, were written down around 930. Prior to that, the melodies were transmitted orally.
As for the Church Fathers, their polemics against instrumental music testify to their preference for the human voice as the ideal instrument for the Mass.
Church music has had its ups and downs; in the 20th century, several popes attempted to get the Church back to its heritage of Gregorian chant and polyphonic choral singing (the latter was developed in the Renaissance). A history of these developments is available in an article by Susan Benofy.

The antiquity of some chant pieces for the Mass may be discerned from their texts. Some of them have texts from the Old Latin Bible which predates the Vulgate, so they go back to the 4th century, if not earlier.
Also, the distinction between singing and speaking isn’t always clear. Singing is “elevated speech”, and the practice of singing the readings and other parts of the Mass was useful for audibility — probably necessary, when congregations were large enough. Christopher Page, in his book “The Christian West and its Singers”, indicates that the office of lector started to appear around 200; it eventually became their task to sing or read.
So how ancient is ancient? It’s certainly plausible that Mass was spoken in some places or in conditions of persecution, but the early Christians did have a connection with Jewish sung worship.

I know that the Mass was sung on Easter and Christmas, but I doubt it was sung every Sunday.
On one hand, the hymns in Revelation are said to be spoken, not sung, and I would think the Church would take the cue about how to celebrate the Liturgy after the Liturgy of Heaven from that.
On the other hand, the Jews sang the Psalms, as you said, and so I would think the Church would take the cue of how to celebrate the Liturgy from that. If that’s a correct understanding of the celebration of the Blessed Sacrament, that is.

It’s not sound to rely on a distinction in Scripture between “say” (or “speak”) and “sing”. There just isn’t a clear distinction between chanting a hymn and saying it with a raised voice.
To this day, the liturgy books use the verb “to say”, even for the parts of Mass that are sung. (A rubric in the GIRM now states, for the benefit of confused people, that they may be said or sung.)

We were talking about liturgy, not Scripture in general. Sorry if I didn’t make this plain.
I’m not sure what sort of position you’re staking out about the sung Mass. There certainly was an evolution in the early church’s use of music. Instrumental music was banned for a long time, due to the use of instruments in pagan rites.
The church’s sense of restraint extended to vocal music too: According to St. Augustine, St. Athanasius was so strict that he told his cantors to use so little variation of melody that they might be described as pronouncing the words rather than singing then. St. Augustine, on the other hand, sang psalms with his congregation.
There was also an evolution in which parts were sung. By the time of St Gregory the Great, a sung psalm was added to the three processions of the Mass — the Entrance, the Offertory, and the Communion — and the celebrant’s prayer formed the conclusion. It would have to seem odd if the priest were the only person in the assembled church who didn’t sing some of his words!
In any case, if you want to contend it’s not “part of Tradition”, you may need to reflect on what your definition of Tradition is: does it cut off at some particular year? That would not be the Church’s concept of Tradition.

Well, if the singing Mass was handed down from Jesus to the Apostles, and from the Apostles to their successors, I’d say the singing Mass is part of the Church’s Tradition.
But I don’t know if it was, as I can’t find such a thing in the Church Fathers. They talk about some singing parts and some singing on certain feasts, but no singing Mass in general.

By that standard, almost nothing of the liturgy is in the Church’s tradition! So this is where the confusion is.
Tradition is not limited to things handed on by Jesus to the Apostles. It includes post-Apostolic developments under the direction of the Sacred Magisterium. Practices such as Eucharistic adoration, which only developed in the Middle Ages, are part of the Church’s Tradition.
The definition presented by Fr. Peter Stravinskas in OSV’s Catholic Encyclopedia puts it:
“Tradition is divided into two areas: (1) Scripture, the essential doctrines of the Church, the major writings and teachings of the Fathers, the liturgical life of the Church, and the living and lived faith of the whole Church down through the centuries; (2) customs, institutions, practices which express the Christian Faith.”

So Tradition is basically the life of Christ and the Church?
Hmmm…that’d make it like the seed that grows into a beautiful tree in Jesus’ parable.
Alright, so singing Mass is part of Tradition. Does that mean ever form of Mass is Tradition too?